


Hate to Sleep Alone

by deathwailart



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Angst, Multi, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:45:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1613804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even when you're sleeping together, sometimes you need a night apart.  Especially when you're the only four trying to prevent the end of the world.</p>
<p>Written for the prompt: modern ot4 + When was the last time either slept alone?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hate to Sleep Alone

**Desmond**  
The thing is that Desmond hadn't exactly planned on any of this. Okay maybe once he got to know Lucy. And please, Shaun and Rebecca were fooling absolutely no one and between leaving the hideout and arriving at the villa, they'd all sort of fallen together. He's not ungrateful but he's confused enough that he really doesn't question it even when he maybe should. His mind is a mess and it's weird, actually being aware of bits and pieces of you that aren't right, a stride that isn't his with English feeling wrong and heavy on his tongue, silver ghosts and flickers on the edges of his vision where the world around him transforms into a souk. Nightmares where the world is black and red and black and red and messages he can't even begin to comprehend, a frightened voice sobbing and whispering. It might be him one day.  
  
It shows every sign of being him the deeper he goes and he doesn't understand how they can stand to share a bed with him when he wakes screaming so often and tosses and turns. He's grateful that Rebecca high fives him (but he sees the fear and hurt in her eyes, hurt directed at him and his suffering) at being a co-member of the violent sleeper club and that Shaun complains and directs a string of invective at both of them because look at my bloody calves you morons, are we going to have to get some sort of tranquilisers involved. Lucy always gets them back to work with something Desmond privately calls her mom voice because she was the one who was there when the nightmare got bad because she's always there, the one constant he's got right now that isn't the Animus. It's hard to think of the Animus as a constant no matter the number of hours he spends in it when it's pretty much the reason he's having these nightmares and following Ezio's ghost to find ways into the Sanctuary. Lucy's there though, like she was at Abstergo, Lucy with her hand on his shoulder who looks out for him, pulls him into hugs when he needs them.  
  
There's a night though when it's bad. It's after finding one of Ezio's buried memories of Cristina and those are enough that he usually hops out of the Animus for a break, trying to shake off the residue that clings to the inside of his head. It's bizarre, the way he feels whenever Ezio seems to spot a young woman with her face in a crowd; the sudden surge of joy and hope only for it to be dashed and replaced with nothing when it's not her and then the Animus changes, Ezio always racing after her but she's never in reach. Today...today Desmond got it. The Bonfire of the Vanities (Ezio seeing ghosts too, the family he lost in the home he could never return to) and Cristina in his arms one last time, the life he could have had fading away. Desmond doesn't know how to feel only that it's too loud inside his head and he wants to scream and cry and he knows that sleeping next to the others isn't going to happen. He's going to see himself holding Cristina or he's going to see himself holding one of them and he can't do it.  
  
It's not the first time he's slept alone and they give him the space. He knows that they're going to check on him because he's going to scream tonight, that sort of dreadful surety he's familiar with by now, the embarrassment and shame and fear he tries to suppress in front of them because they've got a job to do and what the hell is crying about it going to accomplish. He'll make bad jokes and Lucy's face will take on that hard edge and Shaun and Rebecca will get suspiciously busy. But it's still better than just saying 'hey I'm losing my mind guys' when he knows they've got no answers and no alternatives.  
**  
Lucy**  
She's always the last one to bed out of necessity. She has emails to check, she needs to do a sweep to make sure they're safe and secure, that Desmond is inside if he's been outside stretching his legs on the rooftops surrounding the villa, backing up all their vital data and steeling herself. She loves them. She can't help it, she's a loving person somewhere, it's why she's in the position she's in because she's tired of this world at war with itself and this is the only way.  
  
She tells herself she deserves the comfort.  
  
She tells herself she is selfish and awful so why shouldn't she just do it?  
  
So she falls asleep on one side of the makeshift bed with her chest to Desmond's back, one arm and leg around him (hand flat to his chest so she can feel his heartbeat, always keeping track of him) with a foot flat against Shaun's calf, Rebecca's fingertips just brushing her wrist. She's the one who wakes up when he has nightmares, always trying to nudge him awake before they begin in earnest, the one who sits up with him when they haul hoodies and jackets on over whatever they're wearing to sleep, sitting up with him in the dark of the sanctuary. Sometimes they get dressed and head up to the roof, talking about anything that isn't the current situation or Desmond's ancestors because the ghosts are too close, crowding inside his head and Lucy's guilt is sometimes too great when it's the small hours of the morning and she's tired and scared, fearing that she'll spill her secrets if they talk about it too much.  
  
It's when they know they're close – it turns out to be the last night before the big breakthrough but she doesn't know that then – that she can't join them in bed, despite the offers and the lines they all use, saying that they all need the rest and that she needs to make sure they're ready. Especially Desmond. Vidic was right about her, she's a brilliant actress, the only one they could have for Project Siren but the guilt gnaws at her as her fingers hover over the keyboard as she prepares to type out another message to Vidic, to say that they're close, that they're going to find it. _Traitor_ , hisses a part of her mind that sounds suspiciously like Desmond, _Liar._ She bites her lip, hits send, covers her tracks. She just wants it all to end. She just wants it to be over, for this senseless war that's claimed countless lives to come to a halt, so no one else has to die, so there are no more people like Subject Sixteen ( _he has a name and you haven't ever told them that_ ) or Desmond ( _you know he'd never agree to this, he trusts you, you didn't even have to convince him after your big 'rescue', he finally believes in a side and you're going to betray him_.)  
  
She stays up all night, her eyes burning. Vidic's response to her is blurred when she reads it. It's better that way, she doesn't know if she could really stomach seeing it as clear as day right now.  
**  
Shaun**  
Somehow he's the one who ends up in the middle most of the time. Rebecca says it's because they don't want to risk him rolling out and bitching about it all day and Desmond smirks and starts quoting the discovery channel or some nonsense about how animals protect the weak members of the herd until Shaun points out that they're not herbivores which leads to Rebecca giving a big spiel on vegetarianism and the dirty dirty carnivores she's surrounded herself with until Lucy does her throat clearing, eyebrow raising 'really' combo. It's very effective, honestly they should bloody weaponise it.  
  
Shaun complains because invariably he gets elbowed by Rebecca or smacked in the mouth by a flailing Desmond arm and Lucy has the coldest toes that she likes to press against his legs in the middle of the night but he likes it. He might even love it but it's far too early and it feels like some artsy apocalypse wet dream scenario and well that hits a little too close to home right now.  
  
But sometimes he doesn't join them. He's not used to this level of being around people in this sort of vacuum where they're cut off from the rest of the world but so aware of it too. They've got a deadline to save the world and Desmond's losing his mind – they all sleep in the same bed, they know the screams and Shaun's a historian, not a scientist but he knows what they're doing to his mind. There's a life he used to have that he won't ever get back and that's his own fault because he couldn't take a telling but it still hurts because he didn't know he really did have a choice until it was gone. So it's why, as they get closer and closer – they're all sure of it, it just feels like they _have_ to be getting there – he has a night where he sits up at his computer, looking through the codexes he's put together until the words blur and he thinks 'I should go, I should clamber over Rebecca and elbow Desmond in the ribs for once and get some sleep' but he doesn't. He sits up in the cold, sleeves pulled as far over his fingers as he can and Ezio might be Desmond's ancestor and Shaun's family might all still be alive but he knows what it's like to lose people and know you're never going to get back what you had before.  
  
**Rebecca**  
So for forever it was her and Shaun sharing a bed because hey, Shaun's a good looking guy once you get past the old man knitwear and she actually likes his whole pissy deal. Then Lucy came back and hey, they hooked up a few times back before Lucy had to cut ties and Lucy looks like she needs to be held. And Shaun joined in because her and Shaun are a package deal and once they explained that, Lucy didn't have a problem. Finally Desmond and wow, him and Lucy needed a room and apparently him and Shaun did too and Rebecca is more than happy to be the catalyst that gets them all in bed. Three attractive and awesome people in one bed with her? Hell yeah. Plus there's less room for her to move around in the night. Because yeah she kicks. And flails. And sometimes rolls out of bed if she's on the edge. Or rolls someone else out.  
  
Shaun always whines about his bruises but Shaun bruises like a peach anyway and it's Shaun, she's pretty sure he complains for the sake of complaining and he's had _years_ to actually do something about the situation like separate beds (or tying her down and damn, definitely an idea she's going to have to float at some point when they've got time and a real bed that's actually big enough for four adults) but he hasn't. It doesn't ever stop Rebecca from missing her family or her dog any less because you can't just replace something and expect it to be the same but she's close to people. She needs that. Needs something to ground her because she gets lost sometimes without that and before it used to be when she'd go craving her next adrenaline fix until that bit in her the ass courtesy of her leg and then it was coding. Coding until her eyes burned and her fingers ached and she had to lie down for a day with the migraine. The rush of accomplishment was great but it was lonely if she's honest. Then there was Shaun and she had someone in the room with her even if their projects were solo endeavours for the most part.  
  
And now she's got her weird little pseudofamily – two husbands and a wife, even for her that's probably something none of her old friends would see coming – and yeah, she's still coding but she has friendly arguments and she can listen to music with Shaun in bed, razz Desmond about something like his gross carnivore meat breath, curl up with her head on Lucy's shoulder when she feels lonely and needs reassurance.  
  
But sometimes she misses when it was just her. Her and her boards and then her and her laptop and instead of another person in her bed it was her dog who'd hop up and keep her feet warm and wake her by pressing his cold, wet nose into her neck. So she grabs a blanket and her mp3 and finds somewhere else to sleep, the only nights she's ever really still, lost in her memories and wishing that sometimes she could program the Animus just to relive all the little moments she misses.


End file.
